Note card with Pierced Hearts

Yesterday was quite a day - I had tons of thing to finish up for various design teams, swaps, Design Studio classes and my blog and had set myself a list of things I to do by the end of the day. However, the plans just did not work out - when I turned on my laptop it would light up and then "try" to get started, then turn itself off, try starting again, turn off, on, off in a never ending cycle - and the screen stayed black! My goose was cooked. I had been thinking that I would need to replace my laptop relatively soon - but not this week....

After a lot of phone calls, I found out that I would need to send the laptop in for repairs (to Texas) and that it could take three weeks or more to get it back. Well - that just wouldn't work - I am already behind on some things for other reasons and I need to do a lot before we go away next week. So, my upgrade to a new laptop came sooner than planned. Thanks to my wonderfully helpful brother-in-law, I was able to get the hard drive pulled from my non-functioning laptop and I am in the process of transferring over 100 GB of data (mostly photos and digital scrapbook pages) and reinstalling programs - What a mess!

On the bright side - I didn't have a crash that destroyed my data and with patience, I will get it all set up and functioning again. I am learning Vista (even though there will be a change to Windows 7 this fall) and I finally installed the upgrades to my Creative Memories Memory Manager and Storybook Creator software programs. They should be able to get the old laptop working again under the warranty so in the end I will have a back up in the event of a future technology problem. The new laptop is also pretty!

So, I am working on very little sleep - we also had two classes today. I did have a chance to get my Design Studio installed and created a new file, using what is quickly becoming my favorite feature - "hide selected contour."



Here you can see the keypad with the tag I used to create this design highlighted.



This view shows the image in a size you can see (I wish we could zoom in on the keypad view on some of the cartridges!)



I welded several tags together and resized them as a unit. I created a rectangle in the proper size for an A2 card and adjusted the tags to fit neatly. Then I hid the inner and outer lines of the tag as well as the circle for the hole.



Here is how the card looked in preview.



I did my first test cut on double sided lightweight cardstock.



The opposite side is green and could be used for writing a message.



You would want to be sure to keep the writing in the area that won't show through the openings.



For my second test, I chose this glitter cardstock from the DCWV Sweet Stack.



I wanted the scallop edge of one stripe in the design to end up on the edge of the card.



I used the first cut as a guide - you can see here that if I put the paper on the mat in the usual placement, the scallops would be cut off.



By offsetting the placement just a bit (about 1/8 inch), I was able to make the darker pink scallops line up on the edge of the card. I used the first paper as a guide to set up the cut location.



The card cut ended up in the precise location on the paper that I had chosen for my design.



Here is the card cut right after I took it off the mat. It cut very easily but since I used glitter cardstock I did use multi-cut set on "2."



After scoring and folding, the card looks like this - you could add some vellum or lightweight paper as a liner if you needed a lot of room for your sentiment or message.



In this close view you can see the alignment of the scallops.



There are lots of variation possible with this design - the paper or cardstock choice will make a big difference in the style of the final card. I think a monogram for a newlywed couple would be a nice addition to the top.



I'd love to see some finished cards made by other people using this file. If you make one, please leave me a comment with a link to your blog or a message board posting so I can see how you expand on my idea for this card - Thanks!

Pierced Heart Note Card